Germany agrees to pay pensions to 66,000 Holocaust victims from around the world

Germany has agreed to pay pensions to about 16,000 additional Holocaust victims from around the world after a year of tough negotiations.

The survivors who will benefit are mostly those who were once starving children in Nazi ghettos or forced to live in hiding for fear of death.

The agreement was made between the New York-based Claims Conference and the German government.

Support: Germany has agreed to pay pensions to about 16,000 additional Holocaust victims from around the world. This photo shows a group of Jews being escorted from the Warsaw Ghetto by German soldiers in 1943

Greg Schneider, the conference's executive vice president said it was 'not about money - it's about Germany's acknowledgement of these people's suffering'.

He added: 'They're finally getting recognition of the horrors they endured as children.'

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Of the new beneficiaries, 5,000 live in the U.S.

But part of the agreement does not immediately cover survivors who were young Jewish children born in 1938 or later.

'We will continue to press for greater liberalisations to ensure that no Holocaust survivor is deprived of the recognition that each deserves,' Stuart Eizenstat, special negotiator for the conference, said.

'That's why we continue to negotiate.'

Evil: The survivors who will benefit are mostly those who were once starving children in Nazi ghettos or forced to live in hiding for fear of death due to the horrific policies of Adolf Hitler

Germany will now pay reparation pensions to a total of 66,000 people who survived Nazi death camps and ghettos, or had to hide or live under a false identity.

Mr Schneider said the humanitarian deal was reached because of a broadening of the criteria for payment to Holocaust survivors.

Under the new rules, from January 1, any Jew who spent at least 12 months in a ghetto, in hiding or living under a false identity, is eligible for a monthly pension of 300 euro (£256) a month.

For countries in the former Soviet bloc, that amount is 260 euro (£222).

Until now, the minimum time requirement for living under such duress was 18 months.

Julius Berman, chairman of the Claims Conference, which provides services and reparations to victims of the Holocaust around the world, said conference officials 'have long emphasised to the German government that they cannot quantify the suffering of a Holocaust survivor who lived in the hell of a ghetto'.

The Germans established more than 1,000 ghettos for Jews while the Nazi leadership in Berlin deliberated the Final Solution - a plan to murder all European Jews.

Some ghettos existed for only a few days, others for months or years, before residents were either shot in mass graves or deported to death camps.

More than 400,000 lived in Poland's
Warsaw ghetto, and hundreds of thousands of others were squeezed into
similar enclaves in eastern European cities like Vilnius, Lodz, Minsk
and Odessa - starved and often battling deadly illnesses while forced to work.

Agreement: Germany will now pay reparation pensions to a total of 66,000 people who survived Nazi death camps and ghettos, or had to hide or live under a false identity. Pictured is German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Germany also has agreed to offer pensions to those who are 75 or older and spent three months in ghettos like the one operated in Budapest, Hungary, from November 1944 to January 1945.

That provision is expected to affect about 4,500 survivors next year and 3,500 more once they are 75.

New Yorkers Otto Herman, 81, and his sister Erzsebet Benedek, 78, were forced into the Budapest ghetto in October 1944, when he was 14 and she was 11.

They were freed when the Russian army arrived in January 1945, but they lost most of their family during the war.

The siblings, who now live in neighbouring apartments in Brooklyn's Williamsburg area, said the pensions would help them financially, but could not compensate for their harrowing wartime experiences.

'It is not enough,' Mr Herman said. 'I will never forget ... Sometimes I don't want to speak because of the memory.'

To reach the new accord, Mr Schneider travelled to Berlin each month.

'It was not easy to negotiate this - it took a year of hard-fought negotiations with the Germans, with many meetings and lots of documentation,' he said.

There has so far been no response from Germany's Ministry of Finance which provides the funding.

In all, the Claims Conference - formally called the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany - estimates that the changes will result in an additional £416 million in payments to survivors.

There is no deadline to apply for the pensions. Forms may be obtained through the conference website and help is also available by phone.

Meanwhile, in another new development announced this week, anyone who worked in the German-run ghettos during the Second World War may now receive a one-off payment of 2,000 euro (£1,710) from the German government.